The main apparent reason is that there would be no end of squabbles - and perhaps war - if nations and tribes were to trace their histories and lay claim to areas they once settled before disturbances like the mfecane and colonisation played their part.Additionally, just about all Bantu people are migrants into southern Africa, the indigenous people of which, ostensibly, are the Khoi-San people. It is indeed very difficult, in reality, to pin any nation in Africa to a particular area. Territory was typically gained either by war, or colonisation, or pure displacement. A painful part of all this is that colonisation in southern African was not overly sensitive to the integrity of tribes and nations. Some were literally torn in two by colonial borders, the Barolong for instance. A new border separated their main settlement in Mahikeng from their arable lands (maismo), now the Barolong Farms. In worse scenarios, former kinsmen become polarised over time, and we saw an ugly version of this in the Bakgatla saga that unfolded recently. Effectively, certain sections of the South African Bakgatla wished to secede from their Botswana counterparts and cases had to be pleaded in court.
This week, we will examine how Israel was similarly torn into two by the apostasy of Jeroboam, the king of Israel who brought about the Lord's undimmed wrath. We will also take the opportunity to look at the term "two" from Tswana language roots and continue to exhibit that it was an integral part of an ancient and long-forgotten protolanguage we all once spoke. This is just as the Old Testament - as well as independent Mesopotamian texts like Enmerkar and the Lords of Aratta - maintain. Indeed, in a prior article, I showed why the so-called Tower of Babel incident, properly understood in its entire "mythical" context, shows all signs of having been an actual and historical event.
